The Toast is Always Browner

My kids are not horribly picky eaters, but they are definitely moody about when, what, and how much they eat. Some days they’ll plow through everything on their plates and beg for more; some days they’ll turn their nose up at whatever I offer them; some days they’ll nibble at one thing and ignore another. Sometimes they’ll gorge themselves at lunch and only pick at dinner. Sometimes they have no interest in breakfast but have third helpings at lunch. My son, at least, is able to tell me whether he’s not eating because he’s not hungry or because he doesn’t like what’s in front of him, and he can tell me when he’s finished eating. But with my daughter, who is essentially non-verbal, I just have to try offering something else or giving her time to eat a few more bites. With my son, my general rule is that once I take his plate away, the meal is over and there’s nothing more to eat until a reasonable snack time. With my daughter, I’m a bit more lenient because she’s not able to express that she’s full.

And since she knows she can nibble after she’s been excused from the table, she will often find a sudden interest in food after her plate has been taken away. Provided, of course, that it’s someone else’s food.

She began that interest before she could even walk. Both kids have high chairs that can either be strapped to a regular chair or sit on the floor. We keep the chairs on the floor in the playroom and often have breakfast and lunch there. I would sometimes finish feeding her before her brother finished eating, so I would let her crawl around while he ate. Without fail, if there was food on his tray, she would crawl over, grab the edge of his tray, haul herself up, and help herself to whatever he was eating. It didn’t matter if it was exactly the same thing she had just had on her plate and ignored. If it was on his plate, she wanted some.

 

To this day, she prefers taking food off someone else’s plate to eating her own. We often have toast with breakfast in the morning, and after nibbling a bit of her own, she will come over and take mine right out of my hand. It’s exactly the same toast. I usually cut a piece of toast in half and give us each a piece, so it’s literally the same slice of toast. But in her eyes, mine is better than hers. Anyone’s is better than hers!

Fortunately, as you can see from the video above, her brother is a pretty good sport about sharing with her. In fact, the two of them tend to like different parts of the meal, so she’ll finish her hotdog and then steal his, and he’ll let her but then ask for more noodles, which I take from her plate because she’s not eating them. This system works much better than just giving her two hotdogs and him a double helping of noodles. Because the toast is always browner on someone else’s plate, apparently.

There's No Accounting for Taste

I was the world’s pickiest eater when I was a child. Until I was about 10, my family couldn’t go out to eat at McDonald’s because I wouldn’t eat hamburgers, only hotdogs. And even after I did start eating hamburgers, we had to wait for them to make me a special plain burger. Merely removing the tomato and pickle and scraping off the condiments was not good enough. If there was so much as a whiff of ketchup or mayo on the bun, I wouldn’t touch it. Pasta could be served with no sauce other than butter. And the only vegetable I would eat was frozen peas. My mother was convinced that I would die of scurvy by the age of 6. I spent many long, lonely hours sitting at the kitchen table staring at a plate of cold broccoli/corn/carrots/green beans until my mom finally gave up and let me leave it. And don’t even get me started on the tricks I used to use to avoid eating certain things, like tucking a bite of something unwanted into my cheek like a hamster then excusing myself to use the bathroom and flushing the offending morsel, or hiding a few forkfuls in my napkin and throwing them away unobtrusively after my plate was clean.

Once I was an adult, I knew this pickiness would come back to bite me in the form of picky children of my own. And I was not wrong.

Although I wouldn’t call my son a truly picky eater. His pickiness, unlike mine, is fairly limited to vegetables. He will eat most kinds of fruit, at least when he’s in the mood. Some days he’ll turn his nose up at a banana, other days he’ll wolf it down before I can blink. But at some point in time or another, he will eat nearly every kind of fruit I’ve ever offered him. He’ll eat hotdogs, meatballs, deli meat, starch in any form (noodles, bread, cereal, rice, crackers), eggs, pizza, cheese and yogurt. But try to slip a few peas in his pasta or some peppers on his pizza, and he’ll refuse to touch a single bite.

And yet, he will eat some of the grossest food combinations imaginable. He is, after all, a boy. This morning, for example, he was eating cornflakes while I fed his sister some yogurt, and he asked for his own yogurt. I gave it to him, and he immediately began putting handfuls of cornflakes into the yogurt, waiting until it got good and soggy, and then scooping it up and eating it with his hands.

He’ll also eat nearly anything as long as it’s dipped in ketchup. This is actually a trick I learned from my cousin. She discovered her son’s enthusiasm for dipping at an early age and contrived some kind of dip for every meal. I’ve tried offering various dips to my son, things that seem to me to be a pleasant taste combination, such as ranch dressing for chicken nuggets, barbeque sauce for corn on the cob, or honey for carrots. Nope. He will only dip things in ketchup. Olives, lettuce, green beans. Dipped in ketchup. Yuck.

But what does it matter if I think what he’s eating is gross, as long as he doesn’t? He might be eating green beans covered in ketchup, but they’re still green beans. He may only eat carrots if they’re mashed into oblivion and dunked in cranberry juice, but he’s still eating them.

Besides, judging by his growth thus far, he certainly doesn’t seem to be lacking in nutrition.

Family Dinner

One of Ryan’s latest developments (other than walking) is that he’s eating a lot more table food. Instead of a jar of baby food, I can now give him a slice of cheese, some yogurt, a chunk of apple or banana, a spoonful of mashed potatoes, a wedge of bagel, or a piece of carrot. I love being able to share my own lunch with him – he gets a wedge of my grilled cheese sandwich, or a spoonful of my cereal, or a bite of taco meat, or a mouthful of lasagna. It gives me a whole new use for leftovers!

I’m especially happy that this happened now that we’re getting into the cooler weather season, because this is when my cooking really shines. I love cold-weather comfort food. Shepherd’s pie, lasagna, chicken-rice casserole, homemade macaroni and cheese, soups and stews…these are the things I love to cook. And these are the things that are easiest to share with a little one! Ryan loves pasta in any form, and any dish with kid-sized chunks of meat and vegetables is great for him to feed himself. So all my oven-baked favorites are just perfect. And thanks to the magic of the microwave, I can warm up a spoonful or two of my last night’s dinner for his today’s lunch.

But I think the very best part of Ryan being able to share our dinner is that it makes it so much easier to have family meals with all three of us. Until recently, I would usually feed Ryan earlier and then while Herb was putting him to bed, I’d make a late supper for us. It’s always lovely when the two of us can share a quiet dinner together, but I grew up with the whole family eating together nearly every night and I’ve looked forward to being able to do that with my little family.

Last night was a wonderful example. I gave Ryan some cheese and a handful of Kix to snack on while Herb and I ate our salads. But after that, we all got some steak and macaroni and cheese. Of course, Ryan got just a little chunk of meat, which he tasted once or twice and seemed unimpressed by, but once I cooled off some macaroni and put it in front of him, he was much more interested in eating. It also makes it so much easier for me to eat my own dinner now that he can feed himself finger foods. There are still a lot of things I need to feed him, or at least help with, but being able to plop a few things in front of him and let him take care of himself is hugely liberating. And I think he thinks so, too!

The Mom Diet

When people hear the word “diet”, they generally think of a weight-loss diet. But the word diet simply means “a particular selection of food”. For example, a vegetarian diet includes no meat or animal products, a high-fiber diet is high in fiber, etc. I’ve always eaten a reasonably healthy diet, probably kind of skimpy on fruits and vegetables, but with a good balance of lean protein, complex carbohydrates, and low-fat dairy products. When I became pregnant with Ryan, my diet consisted almost entirely of grilled chicken, Ensure, and cinnamon Altoids. But it’s changed even more radically since he’s been eating more table foods, and eating at the table. I’ve declared my new eating habits the “Mom Diet”.

When he began eating baby food once or twice a day instead of just having a bottle, I found myself either skipping breakfast or having it quite a bit later in the day. Feeding him just took too much attention and concentration to feed myself at the same time, and once he was finished he was never content to sit and wait while I ate my breakfast. So if I did have breakfast at breakfast time, it was often a piece of toast (or half a piece of toast, depending on how energetic he was that morning) or a few bites of a granola bar and a couple of sips of coffee. When his naps began to fall consistently around lunchtime, I was very good at having a sandwich or a bowl of soup for lunch before he woke up and wanted his own lunch. But when his schedule changed so that he was getting up just when I was ready for lunch, my lunch menu turned into a glass of milk and a piece of deli turkey, or occasionally a flour tortilla with a handful of cheese melted onto it. Often I didn’t even get that lunch until 2 or 3 o’clock, but that actually worked out well because Herb and I soon gave up on having dinner when Ryan did and waited to eat until after he was in bed, which resulted in dinner at 8:30 or 9pm. But at least then we all got a real dinner, complete with meat, vegetables, and bread. So that was generally my nutrition for the day.

But now that I’m trying to get Ryan to eat more table food than baby food, I find myself making meals out of his leftovers more and more often. My breakfast is now the Cheerios that I pick up off the floor as he tosses them down (don’t be too grossed out: I wash the kitchen floor frequently, I stick to the 5-second rule, and I avoid the damp O’s) or the majority of the piece of toast that he’s eaten the crust of. I just bought a tub of vanilla yogurt that I’ll mix with fruits to go with his lunch, and I’m sure I’ll end up eating whatever he doesn’t finish. I’ll pack a handful of few animal crackers or Cheezits for an afternoon snack when we’re out shopping and I’ll eat the rest of the baggie when he loses interest (just so they don’t get stale, of course). And if I’m making something for supper that he can share, like mashed potatoes or squash, I’ll put an extra serving on my plate which of course he won’t finish but I will. So essentially, the “Mom Diet” is actually the “Leftovers Diet”.

And you can see that such a diet will never be confusing with a weight-loss diet. In fact, it’s likely to be a weight-gain diet if I don’t watch out. With only a few minutes to prepare and eat breakfast or lunch, it’s very tempting to just grab a pop-tart or a granola bar or a buttered roll or a handful of tortilla chips. With my hopeful outlook, I’ll always put a larger portion of food on my plate than Ryan will eat, plus it won’t occur to me to take a smaller portion for myself.

Fortunately, he’s still enough of a bag of rocks that toting him around burns off quite a few calories, and once he starts walking on his own I have no doubt I’ll be running around more often than I am now. So for the moment, my energy intake is still balanced by my energy output. I just need to remember that the “Mom Diet” is only successful when it’s used as a very temporary measure. But then, by the time Ryan is a teenager, it’ll probably be all I can do to grab enough calories to barely sustain life before he’s eaten everything else in the house.

Eh, it’s all good. (And I'm not just saying that because today's lunch consisted of some chocolate ice cream that Ryan and I shared.)